Russian is much more conducive to long sentences because it's highly inflected. Adjectives have to agree with the nouns, and verbs can carry the grammatical gender and person markers. This all helps to keep the context clearer, the reader doesn't have to strain their brain to connect the clauses. So long-winded descriptions fit really well into the flow of the text.
It just feels more artificial and self-indulgent in English. As if the author wants to show off how well they can string together longer sentences, and it's up to you, the reader, to keep up with the magnanimousness of the author allowing their readers to glimpse upon their greatness.
Chinese novels are on the other side of the spectrum. The sentences simply can't be very long and but often don't have any connecting words between sentences. The readers have to infer.
> Chinese novels are on the other side of the spectrum. The sentences simply can't be very long and but often don't have any connecting words between sentences. The readers have to infer.
There is no grammatical ceiling on sentence length in Sinitic languages, Chinese languages (all of them) can form long sentences, and they all do possess a great many connecting words. Computational work on Chinese explicitly talks about «long Chinese sentences» and how to parse them[0].
However, many Chinese varieties and writing styles often rely more on parataxis[1] than English does, so relations between clauses are more often (but not always) conveyed by meaning, word order, aspect, punctuation, and discourse context, rather than by obligatory overt conjunctions. That is a tendency, not an inability.
Sure. You can try to create arbitrarily long sentences with nested clauses in Chinese. Just like in English you can create arbitrarily long sentences like: "I live in a house which was built by the builders which were hired by the owner who came from England on a steamship which was built...".
But it feels unnatural. So most Chinese sentences are fairly short as a result. And it's also why commas, stops, and even spacing between words are a fairly recent invention. They are simply not needed when the text is formed of implicitly connected statements that don't need to be deeply nested.
To give an example, here's our favorite long-winded Ishmael: "Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains." The Chinese translation is: "是的，这里坐着的是一群老水手，其中有很多人，在怒海中会毫不畏怯地登到巨鲸的背上——那可是他们一无所知的东西啊——眼都不眨地把鲸鱼斗死；然而，这时他们一起坐在公共的早餐桌上——同样的职业，同样的癖好——他们却互相羞怯地打量着对方，仿佛是绿山山从未出过羊圈的绵羊"
Or word-for-word: "Yes, here sitting [people] are the group of old sailors, among them there are many people, [who] in the middle of the raging sea can/will without fear on the whale's back climb. That whales were something they knew nothing about".
The subordinate clauses become almost stand-alone statements, and it's up to the reader to connect them.
I can see your point now, and we are in agreement that nested clauses are uncommon and at the very least sound unnatural in Sinitic languages, but it is distinct from «The sentences simply can't be very long and often don't have any connecting words between sentences».
Strictly speaking, complex nested clauses are slowly on the way out of English as well due to the analytical nature of its present form, which is what the cited article partially laments, and remain a distinctive feature of highly inflected languages (German, Scandinavian, Slavic, etc.).
It just feels more artificial and self-indulgent in English. As if the author wants to show off how well they can string together longer sentences, and it's up to you, the reader, to keep up with the magnanimousness of the author allowing their readers to glimpse upon their greatness.
Chinese novels are on the other side of the spectrum. The sentences simply can't be very long and but often don't have any connecting words between sentences. The readers have to infer.